Frisco "The Bean" Grotberg-Jensen

Frisco "The Bean" Grotberg-Jensen
February 1, 1997 - October 30, 2009

Top Ten (Current) Best Memories of Life with The Beaner-Man
In chronological order, mostly

1. Going to visit you in the pet store on Brady Street in Milwaukee, while waiting for you to grow big enough to take you home. You were the only orange kitty in a litter of eight black brothers and sisters. You would push your way to the front of the cage when I would visit, and you'd hold your front paw out onto the glass -- a tender version of prison visit, I guess. When my parents visited me in Milwaukee, I made them walk to the store so they could meet you.

2. Smuggling you onto the #10 bus for your first visit to the vet. I'd packed you in my top-loading backpack with a pillow and a towel. You was very quiet and sweet until everyone on the bus decided to cease making all noises. Then, you howled to get out. I let your head poke out the top, and a little girl saw you. Her eyes got really big and she was about to grab her mom's sleeve when I caught her eye, smiled, and put my finger to my lips. Shhhhhhh, I motioned. She covered her mouth and turned around and didn't look back at us. She didn't tell her mom, either. At the vet, three days after I brought you home, you were .7lb. Oh, you were cute!

3. You waking me up in the middle of the night with your head stuck in a glass jar. There was a drop of milk on your head, and you opened your mouth like you were meowing, but I couldn't hear you. It was hilarious.

4. The funny, buzzing noise you'd make when you carried a sparkly pom-pom in your mouth

5. Watching you chase a laser beam until you were panting like a dog.

6. The time I took you to the hippie pet center to get the mats on your rump shaved off. The groomer called me at home to tell me that you were impossible to work with, you were hissing and trying to scratch and bite her. I came to find you shrunk in the back of a cubby hole surrounded by sheep dogs. I stuck my face in the cubby and said, "Hi, Frisco!" and you meowed and walked right into my hands. I picked you up, sat you on the scary table surrounded by drooling idiots, and you sat still as a piece of fruit while she shaved you. I'd never let anything bad happen to you, and you believed me.

7. How you sat in front of the shower curtain when I took a shower so you could watch the water drops run down the plastic. I tried to keep you off the counter with a squirt gun, and you thought it was a game because the water sometimes ran down the cupboards.

8. Watching you chase leaves and moths in the backyard. The week before you died, you matched the piles of leaves.

9. You, rubbing your face and head on Todd's beard.

10. When I went to bed and once I was settled in , I could call your name and you'd come waltzing in the bedroom, meowing loudly. You'd jump on the bed, walk all over us, sit directly on the crossword puzzle I was working on and fall asleep. After getting mad at me for moving the puzzle and laying my head too close to you, you'd go back to sleep and not wake up until I did.

What is Wabi Sabi?

It's Friday night, maybe Saturday morning now, and I've just been playing Guitar Hero in my upstairs den -- by myself. I've moved to level "Hard", but I can't seem to get 5 stars on anything. I've played "The Seeker" about 138 times and sure enough, 4 stars again.

This afternoon, I was in yoga class. Cammie, the yoga teacher, reminded us again that yoga is a practice. Something gradual and meant to progress. There is no ultimate goal, really, unless you count Samadhi, which you easily could. It's hard to discount, and maybe even ignorant.

Either way, Guitar Hero and yoga aren't so different for me. I am, by nature, a very non-competitive person, and both of these activities produce an intense concentration, almost meditative, in me. I suppose I'm dramatizing a video guitar game a little too much, but studies remind us it's healthy to play.

I've never minded playing alone, and in many ways, it's a perfect way to play. Maybe that's why I've never been competitive. A few weeks ago, however, my friend Jay Kalk came to town to visit just me. He is a musician and producer and lives in Hawaii, but I met him as an undergrad in '93. He was one of my best friends the year I read Kerouac for the first time. Jay had a car and a willingness for mindless adventure, so he and I spent a lot of time in his VW Golf, in coffee shops, in our dorm rooms staying up until morning, wandering Moorhead, house party to house party. He was with me the first time I avoided getting busted by the cops at a party, and he helped us find a way to sneak out some convoluted back-route. When I was stranded at some far-off, off-campus house at 4AM, he left the house of a girl he had a crush on to pick me up. In short, he was a good friend to me when I needed a good friend. And he's still my friend, though we hardly ever see one another anymore. We write the occasional email, but until he visited a few weeks ago, it had been at least 7 years since I'd had the chance to sit with him, drink a Guiness, and examine the places we've come. While he was here, we played Guitar Hero in my upstairs den, late on Friday night, maybe Saturday morning.

Yes, we were playing Guitar Hero, and yes, we were playing Rage Against the Machine. Yes, I had the surround sound on loud. Yes, we'd had a few drinks. But more than anything, we were playing, playing hard. Jay kicked his leg in the air like David Lee Roth and screamed, "We're gonna rock this, Crout!" (he calls me Crout -- some variation and abbreviation for my maiden name, "Grotberg"). He threw me the horns, and I threw them back. We hollored out some bad vocals for effect, sang syllables during the drum fills. When we wrapped up the last song, we sat on the couch and wiped our collective brow. I made him a bed on the couch with three quilts and in the morning, I dropped him off in Alexandria.

In case you're not familiar, Wabi Sabi is a japanese aesthetic, which celebrates imperfection. A potter might create wabi sabi art. For example, she could shape a cup unevenly, on purpose. Wabi Sabi might be reflected in the scratch your friend made in your brand new table the first time you threw a dinner party. The scratch is not something that has harmed the table or made it less valuable. The scratch enriches the table, as it now contains the memory of the time you spent with your friend.

When I was playing Guitar Hero tonight, I felt a kind of scratch in the air of the upstairs den. I guess I hadn't been in the room since the last game Jay and I had played. Two empty beer bottles still sat on the table. I wished he were still there, but more than that, I was happy to just remember.